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Jury Selection Resumes in Jackson Trial

SANTA MARIA, Calif., Feb. 22 - After two weeks of fits and starts, jury selection in the Michael Jackson trial resumed on Tuesday, with the judge setting a crisp and efficient pace.

The judge, Rodney S. Melville of Santa Barbara County Superior Court, began the morning by apologizing to the jury pool, who are mostly middle-aged parents.

"We've had a couple of false starts here," Judge Melville told the packed courtroom, alluding to the death two weeks ago of the sister of the lead defense lawyer, Thomas A. Mesereau Jr., and then Mr. Jackson's hospitalization last week, both of which led to delays.

"Mr. Jackson really was sick," the judge said. "He really did have the flu. I talked to his doctor."

By the midday break, seven potential jurors had been dismissed, five women and two men. Each side used 2 of its 10 pre-emptory challenges, which allows lawyers to dismiss jurors without cause.

Mr. Jackson is accused of molesting a 13-year-old cancer patient at his Neverland Ranch in 2003, plying the boy with alcohol and conspiring to hide him and his family from the authorities. If convicted of the 10 felony counts, Mr. Jackson, 46, faces nearly 20 years in prison.

Before the questioning of the jury pool got under way on Tuesday morning, the judge introduced two-dozen more potential witnesses, including celebrities like the comedian Eddie Murphy and the actor Macaulay Culkin, who used to pal around with Mr. Jackson and stayed at Neverland when he was a child.

The prosecution asked the potential jurors their feelings on intimacy, fame and the news media, and their treatment at the hands of the police. Most of those in the jury pool said they had only a passing knowledge of Mr. Jackson and his music and only a cursory acquaintance with his troubles.

"Have you followed the case?" Mr. Mesereau asked a former schoolteacher.

"Very little," she said.

"You don't watch much television, I gather," he said.

In the age of mass media, answers like these must be taken with a healthy dose of skepticism, legal experts said, turning jury selection into a sort of calculus.

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"It's appalling, these celebrity trials," Karen Fleming-Ginn, a jury consultant, said. "Star-struck jurors, people doing anything to get on, telling the court and the attorneys they have no knowledge of the case when they've been reading about it daily."

Others in the pool were frank about the level of pretrial exposure they had to Mr. Jackson. No.63, for instance, an older woman, said she had seen a recent interview with one of the lawyers and was put off by his behavior.

"He answered a question, then kicked in a little comment that was inappropriate, then he laughed," the woman said, without directly referring to anyone. "I thought about it all week and I really thought it was bad."

She was dismissed by the judge.

Mr. Jackson's record sales peaked in the 1980's, and while he is a celebrity, it appeared by the answers given Tuesday that he is known more for his behavior than his music. Few of the potential jurors said they owned recordings by Mr. Jackson. One person acknowledged seeing Mr. Jackson dance on top of a sport utility vehicle at his arraignment.

Another woman in the 242-member pool said that she kept track of celebrities and that she had read a half-dozen books on the O.J. Simpson case. She was dismissed by the judge, as was a woman who said she had twice been falsely accused of sexual misconduct. Another woman, who said she had performed a junior high school cheerleading routine to a Michael Jackson song, was also dismissed.

Many of those questioned on Tuesday morning said that either they, a family member or a friend had been sexually molested or accused of sexual molesting in the past, highlighting the potential pitfalls that Mr. Jackson must circumnavigate.

And while the pretrial questionnaire asked specifically about sexual victimization, it asked nothing about Mr. Jackson himself.

"Michael Jackson is an enterprise and there are so many things that could lead to bias that were absent in the questions," Ms. Fleming-Ginn said.